US government official decries censorship of content, calls kettle black.

The United States government leads the world in content removal requests to Google, as measured by specific items, according to the company’s latest transparency data report for the second half of 2011.

The data, which was released Monday, shows that American authorities requested over 3,800 items via court order. That's more than twice as many as the next country, Germany. Google says it complied with 40 percent of the American requests. In addition, over 2,300 items were requested from law enforcement or other means that did not involve a court order.

Interestingly, according to the Irish Times(reporting from this week’s Dublin Conference for Internet Freedom) Thomas Melia, deputy assistant secretary of state in the US Bureau of Democracy, told attendees that “too many governments were filtering, censoring content, taking down sites, and perpetuating Internet shutdowns.”

Removal requests on the rise

Given that various governments have different standards with respect to freedom of expression, privacy, and other content standards, Google has found that governments, even Western governments, are asking the company to remove content for plainly political reasons.

“It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect—Western democracies not typically associated with censorship,” wrote Dorothy Chou, a senior policy analyst, in a Sunday evening blog post.

“For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors. In Poland, we received a request from a public institution to remove links to a site that criticized it. We didn’t comply with either of these requests.”

Jillian York, the director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation said that this new data shows the increasing pressure from governments.

“This is particularly insidious because, in doing so, that content is not merely hidden behind a firewall but instead disappears entirely,” she wrote in an e-mail to Ars on Monday.

“Google's transparency is a good thing and other companies should follow in its footsteps, but transparency isn't always enough. Companies need to regularly evaluate their presence in certain countries and ensure that they're not complicit in human rights violations.”

Google will take down anti-Atatürk content, will keep passport flushing

Under its “Notes” section, Google pointed out that some countries are new to the takedown request party, including Bolivia, Czech Republic, Jordan, and Ukraine. India had a significant uptick in the number of takedown requests, up 49 percent. Meanwhile, both Turkey and Thailand asked for items to be taken down as they violated local laws against speaking out against Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (the founder of modern Turkey), and Bhumibol Adulyadej (King of Thailand), respectively.

But perhaps the best request was one from the Great White North.

“We received a request from the Passport Canada office to remove a YouTube video of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet,” Google wrote. “We did not comply with this request.”